


Signal To Noise

by kenaz



Category: Airwaves - Thomas Dolby (song)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Bandom - Freeform, Cold War, Dystopia, Gen, music video
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-25
Updated: 2009-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-05 06:24:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenaz/pseuds/kenaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Voice is familiar, human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signal To Noise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amberite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberite/gifts).



  
Gritty snow blows down the alley, sweeping around his ankles and up against the building walls. It melts metallic on his tongue, the slush of acid rain. Grey breath spools from his lips, concrete-colored in the half-light. The Runner kneels and sets the listening device on the building, obscuring the dim red glow of its battery with refuse from the alley-- some old newspapers that have flown there; disabled birds carrying analog data, distorted in black and white.

He scans the bands, headphones sheltering his ears from the ambient sound of the harbor: fog horns, and the slow lap of waves against the pilings of skeletal bridges no-one crosses anymore, except the Night Patrol and their rolling prisons. The antenna stretches an invisible hand into the ether, reaches for communion, an extension of his own arm, of his own mind, trying to pull a voice out of darkness. The glass on the signal strength meter has frosted over.  He rubs it with his cuff, but scales of ice return to obscure it like cracks on shattered windscreen as soon as he lift his cuff: he is a pilot in fog; he flies blind, and puts all his faith in his instruments.

He hears nothing at all. Then: static.

A click, a squeal, a word: _"hello, hello?"_

The Voice is familiar, human. Few things can be trusted now, but a Voice still means something; it means he is slightly less alone. He adjusts the antenna incrementally. "Come in. Come back."   
_  
"What's your twenty?"_

He orients himself. West, then South...

_"Wait... triangulating.  Ok, found you."_

"Can you hear anything from inside?"

_"Switching bands. Hold."_

While he waits for confirmation, he chews his thumbnail, tastes iron when he bites it to the quick and it bleeds. His heart pulses in the close confines of his headphones, keeping time like a metronome.

Another blast of static and a click. The Voice returns._ "Affirmative. Control has enabled the abandoned wires again."_

Through the headphones, the doppler array of sirens filters through, pitch shifting as it pans. He wonders where the Voice is located, but knows better than to ask. The less he knows, the less he can tell when the Night Patrol asks. Their questions are not gentle. 

_"Sticking around for the five o'clock show?'"_

Sound transfers from the airwaves to his own ears as the vehicles come closer, the diesel growl of engines accelerating in the dark. He humps his rucksack on his shoulder; in seconds, the place will be crawling with the Night Guard and their motorhomes. "Negative. On the move."

It's all he has time to say. He grabs the transceiver, and he runs.

# # #

  
In a windowless warehouse, the Penman and the Relay work in the dark, save for the lambent glow of a few incandescent bulbs. The space is cavernous, its conspicuous silence punctuated by the trickle of water moving between the bricks in cthonic streams. The subway once ran beneath here, back when it ran at all. He imagines the tunnels flooded with stagnant water and wonders what else is down there between the rusted rails and vaulted ceilings, though it is probably for the best that he doesn't know. The less he knows, the less chance he'll wake from his dreams screaming.

The Relay hand him a message. "Well done, but you've got to go out again."

The bugs are collecting chatter. Another pick-up, another drop-off, another plant.

"Last one, then you'll be gone, eh?" the Relay asks, his headphones hanging around his neck. He has turned off his microphone and his transmitter is mute. The Runner listens to him closely when he speaks, but knows already that the Relay is not the Voice; he is only a middleman, only a Relay.

The Runner tries to smile, but his lips are stiff and the gesture unnatural. He knows he must have done it before-- smiled, that is-- but he cannot remember when it was a reflex and not a calculated response. He commits his instructions to memory, then burns them. The sulfurous spike of the match hangs in the air, cuts through closed-up mustiness of the warehouse, and he lets the low flame crawl down to his fingertips before he drops it, extinguishing both it and the burning paper beneath his boot.

On the other side of the room, the Penman has folded his rangy body over his workbench, hunching beneath his task light with its telescoping arm. The Runner takes a seat beside him and practices his thousand-yard stare. On the wall, a map of the city shows safe houses and danger zones, friends and foes, though it had likely become obsolete as soon as it had been hung. Concentric circles delineate the reach of their signal, the placement of their beacons, their bugs.

  
"Done."

The Penman is soft-spoken and serious. His voice modulates in his throat gravelly from disuse.

The papers are a perfect replica. The Runner takes them without comment, folds them into his coat, close to his heart, priceless as gold. The Penman stands and extends his hand. The Runner wonders how many other men have gotten out because of the Penman's precision; he could have doctored his own papers long ago and been done with it, but instead, he stays in the dank bowels of an abandoned factory, slowly going blind with the effort of saving other mens' lives penstroke by penstroke.

The Runner looks directly in his eyes-- they are earnest, grave, and green-- and shakes his hand. He has no words: 'thank you' is insufficient, and 'good bye' is cruel.

# # #

  
_  
"Get out of there. Now."_

He had thought that tonight would be the night. He had thought he would find himself walking out across the flat field of concrete, past the Night Guard, toward the bridge, exit papers in hand.

Instead, he only barely escapes them when they come for him in the alley. He runs, runs for all he is worth. He knows the sound a blackjack makes when it connects with the human body; he knows the sound a skull makes when it cracks. The song plays in his head like a record with the needle stuck in the groove.

He drops his headphones and abandons the transceiver with the final tocsin of the Voice is still reverberating in his ears (_"Get the hell out of there. Now."_) and he feels as if he has left a dying comrade on the battlefield.

It's just a Voice, he tells himself.  Wherever he is, they can't find him. The Voice is safer right now than he is. 

Still, he hides under a pylon in the shipyard, knee-deep in water, until he is certain the Night Patrol has gone, then returns for it. It powers on with a dull hum.

"Hello? Still with me?"

He remembers to breathe. The air is thin, like ground glass. He takes a breath and holds it, and holds it, until:  
_  
"Yeah. Still here."_

The voice is familiar, human.

# # #

Night passes less painfully when he is not alone. They talk, the way people used to talk. Conversations, like friends. As if words weren't dangerous.  
_  
"What'll you do when this is over?"_

He shrugs; his body responds to the question, even though no one is there to see him.

"Dunno. Try and get other people out, if I can."

_"You take risks."_

"So do you," he points out. "We all do."

He hears a click. The needle on the signal strength meter plummets. He becomes nearly frantic, his umbilicus cut. "Hello?" He doesn't recognize himself when he speaks. "Stay with me. Please."

_"I will,"_ the Voice assures him.

# # #

He has waited out the morning; perhaps the new day will bring better luck.  
_  
"What's your name?"_ the Voice asks him as the lifeless sun rises diffidently over the docks. Winter has leeched all the color from the sky.

"No names."

Radio silence follows, and for a minute, the Runner worries that he has alienated his only human connection.  And so he answers: "Thomas. My name is Thomas."

_"Hello, Thomas."_

But then the Night Patrol is rolling out again, closing in, and he forgets to ask the Voice for his name as he listens intently to a surge of activity he cannot see. Through the headphones he hears shouts. Screams. Breaking glass. A battering ram crumpling a metal door.

_"Stay where you are. Whatever you do, stay where you are._"

He freezes, blood turning to ice in his veins. Was that the squeal of feedback in his ear, or a human scream? "Copy. Standing down."

Gunshots: one, two.  Not in quick succession, like a fire-fight, but slowly. First one, then the other.

The deliberate sound of an execution.

"What was that?" he asks, but he knows.

_"Nothing. A car backfiring."  _Then,  _"The warehouse has been compromised."_

He drops to his knees, not feeling the hardness of the concrete or the coldness of the snow. His skin prickles. In his pocket, the Penman's papers are creased against his heart. His right hand still burns from the man's touch, from the handshake held a bit too long and the earnest green eyes, the hopeless look of a man who knew he was dead already. "Copy."

The Voice is silent, for a moment, then comes back. _"I'm sorry."_

  
# # #

  
His final run finished, his contacts gone, there's no reason to delay any longer. He has his papers, and he has run on his luck far too many times.

"This is it," he says.  He touches the transceiver, wishing he might have been able to meet the man just once. To shake his hand. To see the face that went with the Voice. It would have been like having a friend again. Not a contact or a comrade or a brother-in-arms. Just... a friend.  But the window is closing quickly, and he might not have another chance.  Each day, the restrictions grow tighter, and tomorrow, perhaps, forged papers and bribes won't be enough.

_"Good luck. Be safe."_

He hesitates. Loneliness floods in, clinging to him like rust on a wire, eating him inexorably away from the outside in. "You too."

There is a long pause, then a sigh. _"Signing off now. Goodbye, Thomas."  
_  
"Goodbye."

Only after the signal fades does he realize he never had gotten the man's name. 

It was probably for the best that he never asked; the less he asked, the less likely he was to hear unwanted answers.

Gritty snow blew across the car park, swirling in circles. It landed cold and metallic on his tongue, the slush of acid rain. Grey breath spools from his lips, concrete-colored in the half-light. The Runner crosses the snowfield, one foot after the other. The Night Patrol stands in a dark line at the gate, and for once, he approaches them with his shoulders squared rather than fleeing. They scrutinize his papers, then scrutinize him. They let him pass. They cannot touch him now.

He has nearly stepped beyond the checkpoint and into the Free City when one of the Guards steps forward, removes his round, black helmet, and smiles.

The Runner stops, stares.

"Hello, Thomas." The Voice is familiar, human.

The signal falters, is dropped.

He hears static. Then: nothing at all.


End file.
